Football Manager 2018 Tactics Improvements

All About the Football Manager 2018 Tactics Improvements & New Features to Tactics Creation

For the third in-depth video from Sports Interactive about the new Football Manager 2018 features we will take a closer look at the major revamp made to Football Manager 2018 Tactics creation and everything else related to tactics, formations, player roles and tactical instructions that has been improved for FM18.

While we have taken a closer look at the coming FM 2018 scouting center and the brand new dynamics module in FM18 earlier, the Football Manager 2018 tactics improvements follows the complete overhaul Sports Interactive has done to make the game even more realistic. FM18 will offer you plenty of ways to help you understand tactics and tactical options to get the best out of your squad on matchdays while providing you with more control plus more feedback to alter your match tactics!

Follow along as we hand you everything you need to know about the new Football Manager 2018 tactics improvements and the new features to tactics creation.

About The New FM18 Tactics Overview Section

New for Football Manager 2018 is that there are two distinct panels; tactics and players.

The tactics panel lets you set up your formation or select your preferred custom tactics, choose mentality and team shape in additional to deliver team and player instructions, similar to what we’ve been able to before. New this year, is that you will be able to customize the tactics overview to your needs. You will be able to expand, pin or reduce the options in the tactics screen depending on what part of the tactics screen you’d like to focus on. A reduced screen will still let you move the players around in a mini-tactics pitch. If you also pin the tactics panel, you will be able to work with two panels at the same time.

The result is a more detailed or cleaner tactics overview specifically personalized for your needs! Overall it’s less cluttered and easier to get grips of while still maintaining complete functionality.

From the player section, you will be able to handle team selection and select the preferred player roles for your tactics and make subtle changes to player roles or duties ahead of your next match based on analysis.

A brand new option to tactics is the ability to determine if you like to use the default player role instructions or personalize it on the personalised player tab. From here you can edit his instructions and customize it according to the strength and weaknesses of the player.

Tactical analysis and feedback have finally been included in the tactics overview panel. Clearly get an analysis of the most positive or negative trends from the most recent matches. It provides a clear characteristic of your team’s playing style, what they are good at and what you need to improve or work on for the future. It will look something similar to the team characteristics of Whoscored, hereby an example of the Manchester City characteristics from 2017-2018 season.

If you frequently looses possession you will get a more detailed feedback on where it happens, either it’s in the defensive third, middle or final third. You even get a clear picture if it’s in the center of the pitch or on one of the flanks.

The tactical analysis are also incorporated into the tactics screen showing you a grid overlay in colours from green to red according to your formation and player roles selection. With over 20 zones highlighted, you will get more feedback on where your tactics are fragile highlighting areas of potential exposure in a red or orange overlay as this shows where your tactics is the most vulnerable.

The analysis also comes with green connection lines that shows strong partnerships between your players. It’s one of the extensions to the new dynamics module and provides you with a clear feedback of the player roles selected and their most recent performances, either they connects well in terms of successful passes or are creating opportunities for each other.

NEW! Pre-Match Briefings

We’ve got familiar with team talks and pre-match press conferences in Football Manager, but you have never been able to have talks with the players about changes to tactical instructions or how you see your team should play in the next encounter. With the brand new pre-match briefings you can!

These briefings looks to mimic how real clubs and managers talk to the players letting you explain to them what you expect from them, what they shall focus on and other changes, such as their duties, you might have done. They will occur on the eve of matches and could become a useful event to see if players understands your tactical changes and what they are expected to focus on.

The briefing lets you emphasize areas of the game they should concentrate on for the upcoming fixture, either it’s running through with them on the selected formation and player roles, specific team or player instructions, selected opposition instructions or pre-designed match plans that are likely to turn the match in your favour after prolonged analysis of the next opposition.

What you emphasize and focus on should be based on the level of tactical familiarity of your overall squad and specific players as it’s perhaps better to get familiar with the selected tactics or formations before asking them to focus on a complete different part of the game.

Similar to half time team talks or team meetings, you will be able to gauge their reaction, positive or negative, to everything you say.

While the briefing occur, you will still have the ability to view tactical analysis made available by your data analyst about weaknesses and strength within your tactics in additional to the scout report of the next opposition with feedback of potential weakness and biggest strength viewable on the right hand side, so you can incorporate elements of this into the meeting.

New Team & Player Instructions

Football Manager 2018 comes with a range of new team and player instructions. While Sports Interactive wants you to discover most of them yourself, one of the revealed ones are the ability to select look for underlaps – a useful feature if you have a mobile central midfielders who likes to get forward and use their creativity to support the strikers.

Within the player instruction tab, you can now also ask players to mark specific positions, rather than zonal marking or specific player marking – an useful addition if the opposition makes substitutions.

Central players will also be able to run wide with the ball, a feature only available for flank players in previous editions. This movement lets you overload the flank in formations where the current flank player cuts inside, letting the central midfielder benefit of the space he left creating a switch in positions that create doubts for the opposite marker on whom to track. The movement will also be beneficial for narrow tactics without wide players.

It’s also one of the main characteristics of the new FM18 player role mezz’ala – a role that looks to drift into the half space from central position. You can learn more about this role and four others in the link above.

Other Tactical Changes and Improvements to Tactics Creation

While there exists a number of unseen and not discussed improvements to the tactics section of Football Manager 2018, some of the new changes and improvements that has been revealed are;

• New Player preferred Move; Ask defenders to bring the ball out of defence
• More choices to set-piece creation; such as creating routines for direct and indirect freekicks from wide, deep or from the center channel of the pitch.
• Changes to existing player roles have also been made. The trequartista can be assigned to all positions in the AM-strata, and not only for the AMC position, while the inverted wingback has the ability to attack as well as defend.
• ability to set more than one player to “lurk outside” on attacking corner kicks